Following the first Team USA training camp practice in Las Vegas, the media scrum around Derrick Rose was bigger than anyone else — bigger than Kevin Durant (then still with the team), Coach K, everyone. It wasn’t even close. And pretty much everything was a variation of the same question:

“How are your knees feeling?”

Those questions have continued after he looked good in practice, after he missed time due to soreness, after his role has decreased from starter to coming off the bench, after limited minutes in games, after questions about if he even should really be on the team.

Rose’s reaction? Those questions aren’t going to go away no matter what he does.

That’s what Rose told Marc Stein of ESPN in Spain the day before Team USA tips off in the World Cup against Finland.

DRose after practice today: "I know the questions are going to come and [are] going to be there the whole year, so I can’t get tired of it"

Rose is going to need to put in minutes during the tight schedule for Team USA (and every other team) the first week of the World Cup. One of Team USA’s biggest advantages is depth — the guys at the end of the roster are top NBA players (your “worst” guard is DeMar DeRozan, who is a stud). But everyone is going to have to play.

Rose is right. Come the season he could play 30+ minutes night and not miss a game and the first question after every game will be “How are your knees feeling?” Until he does it for a season and a playoffs, it will be the main question he faces. And even after that it may be the second one.

Right now we’re all trying to read the tea leaves — limited games in an unusual setting don’t provide real answers. It’s small sample size theater. What you think those exhibition friendlies say about Rose really says more about what you think of Rose’s future than anything else. Team USA may be a great place for Rose to shake off the rust and push through the pain that comes with any comeback, but nobody can read much into how he is really feeling. Anyone who says they can is selling something.

We’ll get a better sense from the World Cup tournament.

But the real answers will not come until late October. And December. And February. And beyond.

In fact, in Saturday’s dunk contest, he didn’t look like a dunker at all.

The Pacers star missed all three attempts of his first dunk, and a Black Panther mask was by far the biggest draw of his second. Oladipo was eliminated after the first round.

Maybe Dennis Smith Jr. wasn’t the only eliminated dunker who left something in his bag. This Oladipo dunk – 180 degrees, throwing ball off the backboard with his left hand while in mid-air, dunking with his right hand – while preparing in Los Angeles was awesome.

A statement released Wednesday by the NFL and NBA clubs says their 90-year-old owner is resting comfortably at Ochsner Medical Center, a hospital which also serves as a major sponsor and which owns naming rights to the teams’ training headquarters.

Benson has owned the New Orleans Saints since 1985 and bought the New Orleans Pelicans in 2012.

In recent years, Benson has overhauled his estate plan so that his third wife, Gayle, would be first in line to inherit control of the two major professional franchises.

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said he’d be surprised if Kawhi Leonard played again this season, a stark reversal from just a month ago. Back then, even while announcing Leonard was out indefinitely with a quad injury, the San Antonio coach said Leonard wouldn’t miss the rest of the season.

After spending 10 days before the All-Star break in New York consulting with a specialist to gather a second opinion on his right quad injury, All-NBA forward Kawhi Leonard bears the burden of determining when he’s prepared to play again, sources told ESPN.

Leonard has been medically cleared to return from the right quad tendinopathy injury, but since shutting down a nine-game return to the Spurs that ended Jan. 13, he has elected against returning to the active roster, sources said.

The uncertainty surrounding this season — and Leonard’s future which could include free agency in the summer of 2019 — has inspired a palpable stress around the organization, league sources said.

At first glance, this sounds like Derrick Rose five years ago. Even after he was cleared to play following a torn ACL, the then-Bulls star remained mysterious about when he’d suit up. His confidence in his physical abilities seemed to be a major issue, and he was never the same player since (suffering more leg injuries).

But the Spurs famously favor resting players to preserve long-term health. They seem unlikely to rush back Leonard. They might even sit players who want to play more often. And Leonard isn’t Rose.

Still, it’s clear something is amiss in San Antonio. Maybe not amiss enough to end Leonard’s tenure there, but the longer this lingers, the more time for tension to percolate.